Even more about Merchanting Clans in Runescape

Part two (deux?) of Runescape Merchanting Clans undercover investigation from G.

I wonder, is there going be a "back to school" market crash this year or not? The one we had last year was rather impressive.

Reader's Digest in Runescape Wikia

Going through the recent Google Analytics results for the Reader's Digest, I noticed that one of my recent posts got linked from an article published in Runescape Wikia. What can I say? It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Whoever did that, I appreciate such recognition. Thank you.

And, speaking about Runescape Wikia, there is one page there I personally visit and use quite often. It is the Market Watch page. With all the grandeur of the Grand Exchange Database, I still prefer the Market Watch as a way to get a quick snapshot of the current Runescape market condition.

Also one more note, this time a "self-promotion" one... I would like to remind you, dear readers, about the "Digg" button attached to every post. If you find a post interesting and worth sharing with others, please, press that button and Digg that post. By doing so, you'll help the Reader's Digest to get more views and better ranking in search engines. Thank you!

Another Market Crash in Runescape or Why is Dragonfire Shield untradeable?

I've been camping, hiking and sliding from waterfalls into icy water the last two days and naturally missed a beginning of yet another panic sell-off on the GE. Before I go any further, please, take a look at Steve's article about it.

Done? Now, here is what I think about it. First of all, I don't think there is a global market crash. All important commodity items are stable as well as majority of middle level/price items and rares. Pretty much only big ticket weapons and armors got hit. And I would not blame merchants there either. In my opinion, it's coming PvP updates that should be blamed. New great weapons and armors were promised, so players started to sell their expensive items of the same sort to raise cash before the updates and before their price would go down. Several days of such moderate sell off pushed big-ticket items to the bottom of their price range and then panic started. Now everybody was in a hurry to get rid of their big-ticket items before it was too late.

I don't believe the sell off is sustainable and view it as an opportunity. In fact, as soon as I read Steve's post and checked the market prices I went and bought 2 sets of bandos and 2 sets of armadyl armor. I am going to keep one set of each kind for myself and sell the other two sets fo profit (hopefully in the near future).

But one thing from Steve's post is worrying me a lot. And it is Jagex's move to make Dragonfire Shield unsellable on the GE. Ridiculous... I can understand that Jagex might be trying to stop heavy DFS merchanting and also might be preventing panicked players from selling their Dragonfire Shields too cheap, but I simply can't see how such move can be positive. Unless Jagex interferes even further or removes this restriction players will keep dumping their dragon visages till they hit the high alch bottom. I can hardly see it as a good thing.

Another side of this move is "ethical". Imagine a merchant player who saw shields dropping in price and bought 10 of them (and no, it wasn't me, I don't normally merchant expensive items). Then came Jagex and made this item untradeable. That's 150M loss right there. Kind of harsh, don't you think? Wouldn't it be nicer to make an official warning about excessive merchanting or put some kind of a limit on how many DFSs one can sell in a month or something else along those lines? Huh?